Garden Pharmacy – Lemon Myrtle

My usual use for lemon myrtle is as a treatment for coughs, colds, runny nose, stuffy sinus, hayfever. I harvest a leafy branch, put it in the shower, shut the door and run hot water on it till the bathroom fills with lemon scented steam. Or I make a tea with just a couple of leaves in boiling water, with a little honey and hold it under my nose as I sip. The essential oil in lemon myrtle is 90% citral, the same essential oil that gives lemon grass its lemon scent. It’s widely used for lemon flavouring and safe in the kind of concentrations used in food. Citral is antimicrobial – antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral – and it’s also anti-allergic and anti-inflammatory.

In the process of researching this though, I found a couple of other interesting medicinal uses. As an antifungal, it’s even more potent than tea tree oil, and there’s some good research about its use for tinea and candida. The neat oil damages skin cells and it’s recommended that the essential oil be diluted to 1% for direct application to skin. But commercial extraction of the oil from the leaves yields about 1.5%, so if you are using a homemade infusion (a tea) rather than a distilled essential oil, you will be well under this rate.

There’s also some good evidence of its effectiveness against microbes that cause food poisoning, so adding it to dishwashing water or sponges used on kitchen surfaces occasionally might be useful. And it works very well as a mosquito repellent.

 Backhousia citriodora, Family Myrtaccae, Lemon Myrtle

We have our lemon myrtle planted on the footpath. Besides being a very attractive medium sized tree, with shiny green leaves and clusters of sweet smelling white flowers in summer, it’s also good for sharing. It responds well to pruning, so neighbours pruning it for leaves and even branches for their own medicinal steam or foot bath is all the better.

You can prune it into a hedge, or prune the bottom branches off to make it into a nice place to sit in the shade, so it could also be grown as a hedge or a shade tree, or even, if you are really pushed for space, in a large pot. Native bees, butterflies and all kinds of nectar eaters love the flowers.

It’s native to Queensland rainforests, so think rainforest conditions – it likes a warmer microclimate and it won’t cope with frost, it prefers semi-shade to full sun, and it doesn’t like drought. It will grow bigger in warmer climates so the shade tree idea might not work in southern states unless you can give it a really warm spot. It is readily available from nurseries, or, if you have a friend with one, it can be propagated by cutting or layering, or from seed.

Most of the references I found by following references from this link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8305781/

You will find the rest of this series by clicking the tag Medicinals.

Acknowledging debt to First Nations Australians for knowledge of the value of this plant.